Love is not all: it is not meat nor drinkNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;Nor yet a floating spar to men that sinkAnd rise and sink and rise and sink again;Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;Yet many a man is making friends with deathEven as I speak, for lack of love alone.It well may be that in a difficult hour,Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,Or nagged by want past resolution's power,I might be driven to sell your love for peace,Or trade the memory of this night for food.It well may be. I do not think I would.

Sonnet is an Elizabethan poetic form; but this one uses contemporary language and sensibility. The theme of love is tested by forms of possible death--starvation, exposure to the elements, drowning, TB, contaminated blood, broken bones . . .What may be a worse trial is directed toward the soul when "a man is making friends with death . . . for lack of love alone." Yet the poet reaffirms her belief in love: "I do not think I would."

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

The world is full of womenwho'd tell me I should be ashamed of myselfif they had the chance. Quit dancing.Get some self-respectand a day job.Right. And minimum wage,and varicose veins, just standingin one place for eight hoursbehind a glass counterbundled up to the neck, instead ofnaked as a meat sandwich.Selling gloves, or something.Instead of what I do sell.You have to have talentto peddle a thing so nebulousand without material form.Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any wayyou cut it, but I've a choiceof how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.Like preachers, I sell vision,like perfume ads, desireor its facsimile. Like jokesor war, it's all in the timing.I sell men back their worse suspicions:that everything's for sale,and piecemeal. They gaze at me and seea chain-saw murder just before it happens,when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit and nippleare still connected.Such hatred leaps in them,my beery worshippers! That, or a blearyhopeless love. Seeing the rows of headsand upturned eyes, imploringbut ready to snap at my ankles,I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urgeto step on ants. I keep the beatand dance for them becausethey can't. The music smells like foxes,crisp as heated metalsearing the nostrilsor humid as August, hazy and languorousas a looted city the day after,when all the rape's been donealready, and the killing,and the survivors wander aroundlooking for garbageto eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.Speaking of which, it's the smilingtiresme out the most.This, and the pretensethat I can't hear them.And I can't, because I'm after alla foreigner to them.The speech here is all warty gutturals,obvious as a slab of ham,but I come from the province of the godswhere meanings are lilting and oblique.I don't let on to everyone,but lean close, and I'll whisper:My mother was raped by a holy swan.You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.That's what we tell all the husbands.There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone herebut you would understand.The rest of them would like to watch meand feel nothing. Reduce me to componentsas in a clock factory or abattoir.Crush out the mystery.Wall me up alivein my own body.They'd like to see through me,but nothing is more opaquethan absolute transparency.Look--my feet don't hit the marble!Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,I hover six inches in the airin my blazing swan-egg of light.You think I'm not a goddess?Try me.This is a torch song.Touch me and you'll burn.

Modern--"Not that anyone here/but you would understand" she says directly to the reader. Mythic--"I come from the province of the gods/where meanings are lilting and oblique." Shocking--"Humid as August, hazy and languorous/as a looted city the day after." Men beware: "They gaze at me and see/a chain-saw murder just before it happens." Why should beauty, tenderness, vulnerability be destroyed?

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

QUARANTINE by Eavan Boland

n the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole peoplea man set out from the workhouse with his wife.He was walking--they were walking--north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back.He walked like that west and west and north.Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.But her feet were held against his breastbone.The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. There is no place here for the inexactpraise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847. Also what they suffered. How they livedAnd what there is between a man and woman.And in which darkness it can best be proved.

The couple's tortuous trek: "walking, walking, west, west, and, and, last, last, worst, worst." Fragments capture the fits and starts of dying. "Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history." Yet their loving sacrifice for each other endures in history.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

A mother's love knows no boundaries--not even for something unearthly: "the downy hide, the muscular/perfection, the cord, the velvet flanks,/the fetlocks, hooves, a fine and graceful tail." Although a queen she has suffered so much, as he will: "in them well the sharing/of their sorrow."

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

We understood at last the native tongueof the candle struggling to maintainits story on the balcony, in the wind,set opposite the quiet moon.We felt ourselves grow darker with the wineand an increasing reticencethat waited near us like the sleeping children.

Perhaps it was the music playingdeep inside the rooms behind the wall,blues from south Chicago with no wordsbut those the flame supplied,curved and falling like the wind in veilsor flights of stairways down,a failure and advancement, always down.

Perhaps it was the blind wall with its tracesof ivy, advertisements, empty rooms,pattern of our two dark heads by moonlightbroken by the candle's shifting tongue.All our talk became a listeningand echoed from the wallin letters and the seams of vanished stairs.

The moon, the candle, answered to each other;we heard the small one gutterin imitation. loving and unstable,mocking and shaking, of the silent moon.We listened till we half believedit was the language of the dead,their strange flat hands like ivy on the wall.

So distracted by the task of living,we must turn for wisdom to the oneswho wear the past upon their facesas the walls of houses do,as the moon reveals itself in phasesmoving from a scored white vacancyinto the baleful silhouette of fire.

We watched the flame embrace the wax,the crumbling wall surrender to the touchof ivy, sinking deeper in its scars.Close behind, the music played,the children slept enfolded in a dream,their respiration like a lowerrun of minor notes, descending scales.

Later the flame dropped off, so suddenlywe wondered, drunk and silent as we were,why our light companion fledand left us to our old abandonments.Your darkened face, just after, litto features I could understand;I read it with my mouth and handsbecause my eyes were full of night.

The night is alive for lovers. All things become sentient--"candle," "moon," the voice of "music." "All our talk became a listening and echoed from the wall in letters and the seams of vanished stairs."

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

Look at me. I'm standing on a deckin the middle of Oregon. There arepeople inside the house. It's not myhouse, you don't know them.They're drinking and singingand playing guitars. You lovethis song. Remember? "Ophelia."Boards on the windows, mailby the door. I'm whisperingso they won't think I'm crazy.They don't know me that well.Where are you now? I feel stupid.I'm talking to trees, to leavesswarming on the black air, starsblinking in and out of heart-shaped shadows, to the moon, half-lit and barren, stuck like an axbetween the branches. What are younow? Air? Mist? Dust? Light?What? Give me something. I haveto know where to send my voice.A direction. An object. My love, it needsa place to rest. Say anything. I'm listening.I'm ready to believe. Even lies, I don't care.Say, burning bush. Say, stone. They'vestopped singing now and I really should go.So tell me, quickly. It's April. I'mon Spring Street. That's my gray carin the driveway. They're laughingand dancing. Someone's boundto show up soon. I'm waving.Give me a sign if you can see me.I'm the only one here on my knees.

"Stars/blinking in and out of heart-/shaped shadows, to the moon, half-/lit and barren, stuck like an ax/between the branches." Simple words. Complex thoughts. Her lost love. Dead love. She is the lost Ophelia in so much anguish.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

The First Wednesday reading series at the CAC is sponsored by the Mad Poets Society. For more information see the web page (www.madpoetssociety.com) or contact First Wednesday series host Sibelan Forrester (610-328-8162, sforres1@swarthmore.edu)

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Aug 24, 2016

Aug 24, 2016

Therése Halscheid's poetry collection Uncommon Geography, received a Finalist Award for the Paterson Poetry Book Prize. Her poetry and essays have appeared in journals, among them The Gettysburg Review, Tampa Review, New Delta Review. She has been writing on the road, as a house-sitter, for several years. Simple living has fostered a connection to the natural world. New work embodies a stay with an Inupiaq tribe of Alaska, as well as a collection of essays about her father. Website: ThereseHalscheid.com

We have seen many ghosts wandering through the year of poems above. Ghosts of the past, ghosts of our hopes, ghosts of our hurts. Renzie claims he has returned from the dead. We see men and women who seem to be caught between life and a living death. How did they deserve such a fate?

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

Whispering voices rise from the dark earth, cry out from dungeon cells,

from collapsed tunnels far below. Their scattered bones

ache between coal veinsand underground streams.

Today, I raise my glass to all of them. To you.

The Guinness is dark and strong. The froth soft upon my lips.

Sunlight warms my pale cheek, as the old clock tower,

in the center of town, tolls the hour.

(Previously published in Philadelphia Stories)

* * *

We each have a history. History is where we live. Sometimes we must move to a new setting for complex reasons. Often unjust, often haunted, always mixed with emotions. Our memories, our memories of those we know and love flow like rivers, like the seasons.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

Native Philadelphian Michael Toner, wrote an elegant, personal eulogy in memory of Brian Friel, in response to the death last year of the great Irish playwright – and, as I learned, short-story writer. Michael’s article was published in theNovember 2015 issue of The Irish Edition. Titled “The Magician of Ballybeg: Brian Friel (1929 – 2015),” the article relates biographical information about Friel and his work, and observes his place in the history of literature. It also offers insight about how the writer affected Michael’s life and work; as an actor, playwright, director and dialect coach.

My wife, Patti Allis Mengers, also an actor, director and writer, knew Michael from their participation in the Philadelphia theater scene before I met him. She introduced us to one another in the mid-1990s. Almost immediately he and I found that we had much in common; literature, ideas, a love of poetry and language, and, most importantly, the need for a tennis partner.

For the next five years or so we played singles on public courts in Northeast Philadelphia, at Roosevelt Park in South Philly – contending with the traffic noise from I-95, just above us – and even in Maine a couple of times when Patti and I visited Michael at his summertime digs in Belfast. Because of the aforementioned highway noise, we developed hand signals to keep score and to indicate whether a shot was in or out.

I do not recall either of us ever offering the middle finger as commentary on the other’s “out” call, even though our matches were quite competitive. The mood always remained friendly. In 2001 we began playing doubles with two pretty good athletes, which was both a bit easier on the legs and lungs, and also raised our games, somewhat. We did not become good tennis players, but we’ve had a great deal of fun and decent exercise in our mediocrity.

In his tribute to Friel, Michael notes, “Memories flood me of working Brian’s plays…the great ensemble of Volunteers under Deen Kogan at Society Hill Playhouse…the east coast premiere of Translations at Villanova, directed by the Abbey Theatre’s Paul Moore…acting and directing Dancing At Lughnasa in Portland and Belfast, Maine…performing my one-man show of Friel monologues, The Humors of Ballybeg, at Rowan University…doing Molly Sweeney, directed by Mimi Kenney Smith for Amaryllis Theatre…assisting the late Frank Olley in directing Aristocrats at Saint Joseph’s University…each play had its own unique magic, and you knew that with Brian Friel’s words on the page, you were in the presence of a master…” Through his friend, the late Professor Lester Connor, Michael met Friel and his wife Anne in the summer of 1980, visiting for tea at their home in Muff, County Donegal. This was shortly after Translations had been premiered by Friel’s Field Day Theater in Derry city and was touring to sellout crowds in Ireland.

I was able to attend several of the Friel plays in which Michael participated, including Translations, Aristocrats, and The Humors of Ballybeg which deepened our friendship and widened my rather narrow theater education. I’ve been in the audience when he’s acted in Eugene O’Neill’s Moon for the Misbegotten, in Rock Doves by Marie Jones and in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Michael is a voracious reader and Vietnam vet whose own plays address a variety of themes. I’ve enjoyed his one-man show, Ever Yours, Scott Fitzgerald, its title taken from the closing the novelist used in his letters, and Michael’s large-cast Vietnam veterans’ reunion play, Another Dead Soldier.

Over the years, we’ve occasionally exchanged our own works-in-progress, as well as books by great writers; most of them of or about poetry. Gifts from Michael of collections I’ve savored by Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and Richard Howard come quickly to mind. We participated in an evening of scenes from Shakespeare that Patti organized, upstairs at Philadelphia’s Plays & Players on Delancey Street in the mid-1990s. Highlights of the evening were Patti’s late mother, Eileen Kovatch Mengers, cast as one of the weird sisters in a script-in-hand scene from MacBeth and wearing two pairs of glasses in order to read her part, and Michael’s performance. I don’t recall which scene he acted from memory – it may have been from Hamlet – but I do remember that his entrance was arresting and his delivery natural, convincing.

In June, Michael was halfway through the four scheduled performances of the late poet and playwright David Simpson’s autobiographical play, Crossing the Threshold into the House of Bach, a production of the Amaryllis Theater Company. In the play, a blind organist, practicing J.S. Bach’s last chorale preludelate at night, strikes up a conversation with a youth minister that reveals experiences from Simpson’s own life, while exploring profound themes. Michael had completed two performances of the challenging play at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Elkins Park (PA). He was preparing for the second pair of shows at St. Mary’s Church at the University of Pennsylvania, rehearsing at the Amaryllis, located on Sansom Street, when calamity struck.

Walking to catch the train home to Northeast Philadelphia, sometime around 11:00 P.M. and in a heavy downpour, Michael was hit by a driver who fled the scene. The proximity to Jefferson Hospital may have saved his life, but the doctors could not save Michael’s left leg, which was amputated. (Don’t believe the postings on the web that cite his having lost his right leg.) This was Tuesday, June 9th, just days before the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference started, always a busy weekend for me. As soon as she heard the news, Patti visited Michael in the hospital and reported that he was awake and communicating, which was very encouraging. Meanwhile, the Philly theater community reacted with alarm and concern, spreading the news widely and quickly.

Gentle and intellectually inclined, my friend is nevertheless feisty; tough-minded and determined. Anyone who carves out a place for himself in the theater must be. These qualities have no doubt contributed to his recovery, as did keeping himself in shape through running, tennis and exercising at a gym for years.

In a phone conversation last summer Michael told me he had counted 15 visits to Jefferson’s O.R. during which he was under anaesthesia; four times for operations and the rest for other procedures. After being released from the hospital, he received a prosthetic leg and rapidly learned to walk with it. Michael credits the hospital’s staff and that of Moss Rehabilitation with excellent care. He also told me about meeting the daughterof the late Penn professor and U.S. Poet Laureate, Daniel Hoffman, at Jefferson. She was helping Michael plan his post-hospital care. They not only discussed aftercare, they talked literature, which was, no doubt, excellent therapy.

Before the injury, Michael was cast in a production of Eugene O’Neill’s Moon for the Misbegotten, reprising his portrayal of Phil Hogan. On January 20th, Patti and I attended a performance upstairs at the Walnut Street Theater along with a large, enthusiastic audience. “Phil” is an old farmer and Michael’s hindered gait seemed like a natural part of his character. While we were having dinner at a nearby pub after the performance, a couple approached our table. The woman told Michael that she hadn’t realized before the performance that he had a prosthetic leg. She thought his limp was part of the role!

When the play’s run in Philadelphia ended, the cast took it on the road for a month, visiting universities and arts centers in ten states. They performed the play and conducted master classes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England and headed south to Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and then west to Indiana and Michigan. Michael told me the tour was both exhilarating and exhausting, as one might expect, and quite fulfilling.

With luck, Michael will be fitted with a new, computerized prosthesis in the near future that would allow for much greater mobility. I look forward to seeing my friend on the boards for years to come, and someday joining my brother-in-racquets out on the tennis court; volleying at the net, exchanging friendly japes, and laughing.

David P. Kozinski won the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, which included publication of his chapbook, Loopholes. He has been the featured poet in Schuylkill Valley Journal. Publications include Apiary, glimmertrain.com, Mad Poets Review, Philadelphia Stories, Poetry Repairs, Margie, and The Rathalla Review. Kozinski was one of ten poets chosen by Robert Bly for a workshop sponsored by American Poetry Review and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. Last November he conducted a four-session poetry workshop for teens at the Montgomery County Youth Center for the arts-promoting, non-profit organization Expressive Path. Kozinski heads the publicity team for the Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center and has been a Mad Poet for nearly twenty years. He lives in Wilmington, DE with his wife, actress and journalist Patti Allis Mengers.

After the divorce it took awhilein a small cheap apartment,but finally I got another house,this one bigger, emptier.I moved in with nothingof my own to fill the rooms,but still threw out the two chairsand table the previous owners left.I kept the doll I foundin the yard, a Barbie with mattedblonde hair and not a stitchof clothing. A new wife,I thought, and I proposed to herright there in the middleof my cutting the grass, liftingmy beer in a toast to loveand long years together, and thoughI doubt she really wanted it,I did pour some on her hard pretty body,and used my fingers to rub awaythe mud that was caked all over her.Later I actually bathed herin lemon-scented Joy, along withthe dish and glass I'd used for breakfast,lunch and dinner. I didn't feel weirdabout any of this yet, this was still weeksbefore I was in K-Mart and boughtthe outfit, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt,Cowgirl Barbie, but for comfort, really,something to wear around the house.It would have been wrong if I'd gottenthe tight black sequined dress I saw,or the hot baby blue mini with the silverbelt and matching fuck-me pumps.It would have been wrong if I hadkept her naked, sitting on the bookcasebare-assed for all the wold to see.But is this so wrong? She listens to mesometimes; sometimes I can tellshe is not paying attention at all,but that's okay; sometimes I'm not muchfor talking myself. She is always therewhen I need her, though. Is that so wrong?And I'm always there for her. The yardis her nightmare, but she knows I won't letthat happen to her again. I'm not so sureabout the life she's had, the station to whichshe's been accustomed, but it is good here,in this big empty house. She's treated well,and her wardrobe, now, is next to none.

Dolls can comfort children. A poet--tongue in cheek--asks if a doll can do the same for a grown up? To start over, we must pare down to basics. We must put the past behind us--no matter how much acting out it takes. It is our own personal psychotherapy.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

Do you run a poetry organization, magazine or poetry series in the Philadelphia area? If so, please register NOW for the Philadelphia Poetry Festival 2016 by sending your request via email to philapoetryfest@comcast.net. Include your name, the organization you represent and a brief summary of what your org does and where and when you do it. Please use the word “REGISTRATION” in the subject line of your email. REGISTRATION DEADLINE IS FRIDAY, APRIL 15TH

OUR FORMAT HAS CHANGED:

Each organization will present one poet to represent them, who will read for five minutes.In the spirit of the event, we ask that organization leaders or editors NOT read, but choose a poet to spotlight.

AND … WE’RE IN A NEW LOCATION !

This year’s festival will be held at a wonderful event space: THE ROTUNDA, 4014 Walnut Street in West Philadelphia.

OTHER IMPORTANT DETAILS:

BOOK FAIR. The Philadelphia Poetry Festival will include a Poetry Book Fair. This is for individual poets signing and selling their books of poems. All proceeds will go to and be handled by the authors. The space is very limited – You must sign up in advance. Please contact Leonard with interest: gontarek9@earthlink.net

PROGRAM FLYERS/MATERIALS. There will be an area for circulation of program brochures, flyers and information about dozens of Philadelphia poetry and writing outlets. Bring your favorite series information to share!

I'm wearing the lone glove I found in my pocket, sittingon the other hand to keep it warm-

I'm late for work, the radio's news is demoralizing as ever,tiny ice pellets pepper my windshield and same light turns

red three times. I add these to my monologue, then makea dangerous u-turn from the bumper-to-bumper mess

onto a side road which turns out to be just as bad--thickwith drivers who must have had the same idea.

A red fox steps out of the brush and trots along the swalebeside the cars with what looks like a kaiser roll in his mouth

and I picture him stepping out of a Saturday morning cartoon,not a miserable Monday

where a kaiser roll is never a kaiser roll, but a sandwich-sizecreature, locked in fox's jaws.

The school bus I'm stuck behind with its host of red lights stopsat every driveway. Bundled-up kids waddle from their houses.

It's kindergarten I'm late for--where for six hours in an overheatedroom there'll be no time to build a case against the cold and brutal.

I'll take out and put back paints, toys, books--wipe noses and tears,open lids from tight thermos bottles, sing songs to temper the din.

After rest time, they'll watch me make blue squares on a giant sheetof white paper. I'll tell them a palatable version of the story.

Each child will have a square. One of them will draw Mrs. Foxin a pink flowered apron, making her husband's favorite lunch--

peanut butter and jelly on a kaiser roll. She'll look all over--underthe table, in the stove and refrigerator, on top of the cupboards

but won't find his lunch box. He'll put on his periwinkle vest,his hunter green hat with the speckled feather in the band

and in the last frame, Mr. Fox, in his red and orange coupe willgo off to work with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his teeth.

The ironic title of the poem seems to have little to do with the main theme. A working person--a teacher-- goes through the daily trials of life, even confronting the "savagery" of nature, i.e. a fox with its prey (in modern times the Kaiser tried to gobble up countries). Kindergarten is a "safe" place for innocent children. The humor grows as the fox, and life, is made acceptable by giving him a kaiser roll, jaunty clothes and car, and placing him in a cartoon.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

My mother's piano rings through the house,lovely and tortured, both things at once.Passages played over and over until they obey.And when the music does the will of her strong,able fingers, it makes me cry.The hair raises on my skinny arms.

My ugly cheeks rain with tears.

Musical rapture wraps me, wide-awake,all colors and rocking waves of feeling.I don't know what to do. I'll break the spellif I go to my mother, who plays downstairs, alone.But I want to tell her I'm listening.Someone is listening to her wasted music.

Even now it comes to me. Chopin. Bartok.

My sister's breathing, my mother's hands,bringing to my heart something like pain.Dangerous, evocative, music reaches too deeply,too far into a past I've never understood.A secret, in the night, no one else to hear the piano.She only played when my father wasn't there.

Except when they played together,cello, piano, my held breath.

The strong rhythm carries us through the poem. There's a mystery here; only hints in the ending. When music is "beautiful," we wonder at disjointed wording: "tortured-obey-will-strong-cry-skinny-ugly-tears-alone-wasted-pain-dangerous-secret." An entire world hides in and behind the music.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

Last Sunday’s performances at the Regency Café in Lansdowne, PA were pure pleasure. Featured were musicians Michael Asbury and Joseph Nocella, and poets Lili Bita and Robert Zaller, who are married to each other. The program was titled “A Love-in Event”, which was all the more appropriate as it took place on February 28th, two weeks after St. Valentine’s Day. Veteran Mad Poet and host of the monthly reading series known as “Rhyme, Rhythm & Reason”, Camelia Nocella, handed out Mardi Gras style love beads to attendees and presided over the festivities, which included an open mic reading.

Anyone who is even slightly interested in poetry and lives in the greater Philadelphia area has most likely read Zaller and Bita’s work, or better still, heard them read their poetry in one of the countless venues they have graced over the years. They’ve published multiple books – including Zaller’s translations of Bita‘s work from the original Greek – and had work appear in too many journals to list here. Both are long-term Mad Poets and members of the Overbrook Poets group. Writing about them in this blog is a bit like preaching to the choir, but seriously, if you haven’t heard them read, keep your eyes open and look for announcements of upcoming local poetry events. On Sunday, both poets delivered new material that dealt with matters political, with love and sex, and with events both Olympic and ordinary in scale, constructed on a foundation of history and philosophy. As always, they read with conviction and a flare for the dramatic.

A very pleasant surprise was the pairing of tenor Michael Asbury and keyboardist Joseph Nocella. They offered two sets of standards, sandwiched around the poets’ readings, from the Great American Songbook, including Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine” and an original composition of Nocella’s. Asbury’s voice was bell-clear, with refreshingly exacting intonation, and he delivered the songs with originality and self-assurance. Despite his youth (he appears to be in his twenties) I would have guessed he has worked with a number of fine voice coaches, but he told me most of his training has been from singing in church and close listening to recordings. Nocella, who is married to the series’ host and organizer, possesses the true accompanist’s gift for allowing the soloist to excel. In part, this requires knowing when to push, when to back off, and how to frame a performance. His own composition (sorry I missed the title) featured surprising twists of harmony and a sophistication that reflects his familiarity with and understanding of Broadway, jazz and beyond.

Upcoming in this series at the Regency are poet Anna Evans and musician Kathy McMearty on Sunday, March 20th. All the offerings of “Rhyme, Rhythm & Reason” start at 2:00 P.M. The café, which offers a delicious and inexpensive menu and free parking (!) across the street, is located at 29 N. Lansdowne Ave., Lansdowne, PA 19050. Call 484-461-9002 or see http://regencycafe.com for more information.

David P. Kozinski won the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, which included publication of his chapbook, Loopholes. He has been the featured poet in Schuylkill Valley Journal. Publications include Apiary, glimmertrain.com, Mad Poets Review, Philadelphia Stories, Poetry Repairs, Margie, and The Rathalla Review. Kozinski was one of ten poets chosen by Robert Bly for a workshop sponsored by American Poetry Review and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. Last November he conducted a four-session poetry workshop for teens at the Montgomery County Youth Center for the arts-promoting, non-profit organization Expressive Path. Kozinski heads the publicity team for the Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center and has been a Mad Poet for nearly twenty years. He lives in Wilmington, DE with his wife, actress and journalist Patti Allis Mengers.

This raw second day of spring,they sit on the damp patchy green,oblivious of everyone and everythingthat moves around them.

He teases her, hidingsomething behind his back.In mock anger, she twistsher face into something so fierceit causes them both to laugh.

Then she floats her kerchieflike a green flamein the breeze above his head,but he yanks it downand binds her leg to hiswith a knot at the ankle.

One arm around the other's waist,the other boosting them from the ground,they awkwardly riseto try this new thing they've become.Trying to run, they fall,fall and again fall,each time pulling the other uptil they work out this strange, stiff-leggedrocking rhythmand heads tilted back, laughing at the sky,they hobble into the distancefaster than you might expectas though they could managea lifetime like that.

* * *What a unique and powerful way to look at a marriage! "Binds her leg to his/with a knot at the ankle," "One arm around the other's waist,/the other boosting them from the ground," "To try this new thing they've become," "Fall and again fall/each time pulling the other up," "Laughing at the sky/they hobble into the distance," "As though they could manage/a lifetime like that."

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

She lives in me now, in the north of my chest, where it is all dark, all winter--to my ears will come her voice, then to my eyes, this white woman,then pathways to the tribe she roamed with, to places inside mewhere they are hunting and she is gathering and there, a certain arrow,and there, a stab of certain pain

then to moments other than these, to nights when my heart is a drumfor her dancing and her movements tell stories, and I feel in her feetall that was told to me, all that was shared.

When I breathe and the wind blows in a mighty power, my mouth forms a small opening and she scales the dark throat to leap wheremy lip catches the light, that she might sitand be warmed for a while--

I felt her once, during an inner storm, as a certain chill ran through,after my muscles tightened into big cold mountainsthat she was arranging my ribs, arching them same as the sheltersshe spoke of, in the icy north of Alaska, where they shapewhalebone over driftwood and pack it with sod.

There is a veined landscape she traverses in the springwhere my blood runs as thawed rivers

and she waits on the sands of myself for the return of the whale,propped against a white embankment of bones, knees drawn to her chestas in the way of the Eskimo, at times looking up, readingthe starry pores, the sky of my cloudless skin.

Has the white woman absorbed the Eskimo? Or has the Eskimo taken the white woman into her? There is a mysterious mutuality: "north of my chest," "to my ears will come her voice," " my heart is a drum, " "I feel in her feet all that was told,'" "she scales the dark throat," "she was arranging my ribs," "my blood runs as thawed rivers," "the sands of myself," "reading the starry pores," "the sky of my cloudless skin."

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

For one of the last timesThe sun beat down with all its might,Drying streets gave upThe vapory, sweet ghostsOf last night's rain;And anything, anythingAt all that could, gave back that light--Windshields, trolley tracks, andLucky pennies waiting on the sidewalk.So, in the middle of her final sickness--A reprieve. A sun miraculous, tropical and lushShone for them in the middle of November, andThey went shopping on South Street.

The cancer left her gawky and gaunt,Like a girl of thirteen years who grew too fast.With restess eyes she searched throughGrimy windows for a reflection, for an angleWhere still she might be shown to some advantage.Jewels were what she wanted, though;Only they would do--Chiseled, lovely thingsThat would reflect the light of the next century,That would endure to greet a thousand future suns.

Almost out of time now, she hurried alongAs best she could. Limping, her body losingEnergy in the waning afternoon, she dragged himFrom place to place; but he didn't get it.Those old irritations, Saturday afternoonsOf waiting in the mail, settled over him.

And then she stopped. She vacillatedIn the doorway of a tiny shop that soldOnly earrings. He could hardly bear it.He could hardly bear this urgency for trinkets,This urgency that drained her, thatConsumed even this shell of who she was.But he gritted his teeth and fought for patience,He remembered to breathe and stayed right with her.He teetered with her in and out; it was a kind of danceThey did on the threshold of that shop.He searched for her there, in the wreckageOf who she was; and what he foundWas a startling kind of question rising up.

Feverish it hung thereSuspended in the brimming eyes.And when at last he found her,It burst inside him like a bomb.

"So is this it then?Is this too much to spend upon a decaying shell?Am I too far gone to decorate? Even for these?Am I forgotten like a month-old-Christmas-treeWaiting around to be burnt?"

So there it was, all of it,The dying child's questionHanging wordless in the air.Terrifying, rounded and perfect in its way,Turning in a chilly breeze, glitteringFrom one angle, then another,Like a hundred earrings blinking in the sun.

This is a haunting poem. It is immediately seeded in the first paragraph with telltale words: "last-ghost-anything-final-reprieve-miraculous." The husband is worn out with supporting his wife. She is worn out from her illness but wants something significant before life ends. The power builds throughout the poem and is overwhelming by the close. No matter what it takes, we must love each other right up until the end.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

I do not remember the onesharp pain, being carriedby the neck to the dark forest,or the bites into the softof my stomach. I first rememberthe calls of the othersinside the Royal Bengalasking me to join themon their walk throughthe halls and librariesof the great beast'slimbs, or along its spine,and sometimes to the roundof its tail. I was told I, too,would become a greatstoryteller. That soonan insatiable hunger to tellwould come to me.That the dead only knowwhen the living needto hear from us--that I would learn to ignoretheir pleas and prayerswhen needed.

And as the light fell this evening,the great hunger came. And sowe have gathered aroundthe great drum of the tiger's heartand are slapping bass tonesinto the coils of its ears.He ignored us at first,but we were insistent.We entered the soulful water with him

and now wait, half-submergedbehind the leafy cover of a bush,can see behind the golden mirrorsof the beast's eyes the menpulling their boat to shoreto gather honey among the mangroves.I do not remember leapingon the back of the manas he moved toward the trees.I only rememberwhispering in his ear,trying to calm him, telling himhis grandfather was waiting

with the rest of usin the great belly,that he was anxiousto tell him a story, that one dayhe, too, would craveto tell someone something.

This is a fine poem. It has all the ingredients: a strong opening; rhythmic meter; a non-pausing narrative; selective but vivid imagery ("golden mirrors of the beast's eyes"); double entendres (the hunger to eat and to tell); insertion of modern elements ("slapping bass tones"); etc.

However, what makes it especially fine is the unique approach and theme: inside the tiger "live" other people who walk the halls and libraries of his limbs, spine, tail. Telling stories is what motivates humans; and the dead know the needs of the living.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.